1. Field of the Invention
Methods and apparatuses consistent with the present invention relate to image reproduction, and more particularly to reproducing an image using output prediction so as to reproduce an output of a printing device in advance in an image display device before the output is actually made by the printing device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Digital image devices for reproducing colors, such as monitors, scanners, and printers have been provided with various functions and high quality in order to satisfy various demands from users, and they use different color spaces or color models according to respective application fields.
The color models are used to specify classified colors by classifying the colors according to their attributes, such as hue, saturation (or chroma), luminance, and brightness. The color models are divided into a device-dependent model and a device-independent model. The former includes an RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) model which is a kind of additive color space model, and a CMYK color model which is a kind of subtractive color space model. The latter includes a CIE L*a*b* model, a CIE XYZ model, a CIE LUV model, and so forth. The CIE color models have been determined by the International Commission on Illumination (ICI) that sets the standards for illumination devices. The CIE_XYZ color model uses a chromaticity diagram, and is obtained by translating all RGB tristimulus values into XYZ values, which are a different set of tristimulus values having a positive sign.
Meanwhile, image display devices such as monitors use the RGB model, which is a kind of additive color space model, and printing devices such as printers use the CMYK color model, which is a kind of subtractive color space model. Since the image display device and the printing device use different color mixing principles, as described above, they have different color gamuts. Therefore, the two devices output different colors even for the same image signal. Therefore, various soft-proofing technologies capable of preliminarily predicting the output image of a printing device through an image display device have been disclosed, and these technologies may be classified into two types of soft-proofing technologies.
First, a soft-proofing technology (first-type soft-proofing technology) using a fixed viewing environment has been disclosed. The first-type soft-proofing technology refers to a method of creating RGB data of an image display device so as to correspond to CMYK data of a printing device under a constant viewing environment. Since the first-type soft-proofing technology has been made without taking various viewing environments into consideration, it has a problem in that the color of a soft-proofed image in the image display device is not exactly matched with the output image of the printing device when conditions change.
Secondly, a technology (second-type soft-proofing technology) of performing a soft proofing through sampling of various viewing environments has been disclosed. The second-type soft-proofing technology refers to a method of performing a soft proofing with reference to a viewing environment, which provides the best color matching based on an actual viewing environment, among a plurality of viewing environments having preset conditions. Therefore, in order to use the second-type soft-proofing technology, it is necessary to preliminarily set up many viewing environments for exact matching with various actual viewing environments, which rapidly increases the number of viewing environment conditions.